"Spire" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... my youth! [2] Seat of Friendship and Truth, Where Love chas'd each fast-fleeting year; Loth to leave thee, I mourn'd, For a last look I turn'd, But thy spire was scarce ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... Senora da Monte, a brig of three hundred tons, bound for Lisbon. The captain was an old Portuguese, full of superstition, and fond of arrack—a fondness rather unusual with the people of his nation. They sailed from Goa, and Philip was standing abaft, and sadly contemplating the spire of the Cathedral, in which he had last parted with his wife, when his elbow was touched, and ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... been deemed sacrilege for mortal eyes to view the ancient writings. The single copy is kept in a great vault, built of indestructible metals, and protectively sheathed to last for all Time. The spot above its burial place is marked by a tall spire of stone. It is ...
— The Women-Stealers of Thrayx • Fox B. Holden
... picture of that same season. It was early; so early that the cross of Grace Church had, when I looked up, just caught the morning sun, and for a moment flamed like a crusader's symbol. And then the grace and glory of that exquisite spire became slowly visible. Fret by fret the sunlight stole slowly down, quivering and dropping from each, until at last the whole church beamed in rosy radiance. Up and down the long avenue the street lay in shadow; by some strange trick of the atmosphere ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... as pretty a little room as any child could have wished for—bright and neat and comfortable, with a pleasant look-out on the lawn at the side of the house, while farther off, over the trees, the village church, or rather its high spire, could be seen. For a moment Beata forgot her ...
— Rosy • Mrs. Molesworth
... the tiny Rhaetian village of Alleheiligen. So high on the mountain side were perched the simple inn and the group of brown chalets clustering round the big church with its bulbous, Oriental spire, that they caught the last red rays of sunset and held them flashing on burnished copper roof plates, and jeweling small, bright window-panes long after the green valley below was ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... vista of trees and houses from the slope of our garden, W. V. saw the roof and spire of the church of the Oak-men showing well above the ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... there contracted." The old sanctuary in which he was buried is a noble specimen of decorated gothic architecture, a cruciform structure of yellowish-gray stone, with low eaves and broad sheltering roof, from the midst of which rises a square battlemented tower with slender pointed spire. It is approached by a paved stone path bordered with limes, leading from the highway through the graveyard where, beneath a twilight of shade, many generations of the rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... shunned the port of London, I only knew the church through his pointing out its spire from on board. Perhaps I might recall, if it were any good to try, the way by which I went to it alone from the river; but how we two went from it to Riderhood's shop, I don't know—any more than I know what turns we took and doubles we ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... evening grew every moment more crystalline, more miraculous. Westward from St. Faith's the beechwood which stretched for some miles toward the heathery upland beyond already cast its veil of clear shadow over the red roofs of the village, but the spire of the gray church, over-topping all, still pointed a flaming orange finger into the sky. The river Fawn, which runs below, lay in sheets of sky-reflected blue, and wound its dreamy devious course round the edge of this wood, where a rough two-planked bridge crossed from the ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... self-satisfied, contemptuous, inhuman, like some cynical, debased speculator making a sure profit out of the innocent weaknesses of human nature. As she turned and looked she could see the whole ugly town with the spire of St. John's-Paul's ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... erected in 1726, after his death. In the early years of the present century, Alexander I. rebuilt this stately and graceful edifice, after the plans of the Russian architect Zakharoff, who created the beautiful tower adorned with Russian sculptures, crowned by a golden spire, in the centre of the immense facade, fourteen hundred feet long, which forms a feature inseparable from the vista of the Prospekt for the greater part of its length, to the turn at the Znamenskaya Square. On this spire, at the present day, flags and lanterns warn the inhabitants ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... the next time he came to the station would probably be at the end of term, when his schoolboy days would be over. He leaned against a gate, and looked long at the green quiet hill, with its tall spire and embosoming trees, till he fell into ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... outbreak with the solicitude of a citizen whose dearest interests are at stake, I also, from habit of mind and duty, must study it as a part of the great campaign of the year. If there are organizers at work there will be signals to-night, and I can see them from a tall neighboring church-spire. Yet how can I leave ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... violin on the plinth, signed and dated 1537, but restored. The treasury contains a fine monstrance of silver, Gothic in design, with bands of pierced work and tabernacles at the sides on twisted columns. It has a spire-like top with windows and pinnacles between round its base, a feature which is repeated on the knop. In the seventeenth century several figures were added or replaced and the stem repaired. The Scuola dei Battuti, built in 1451, has a door with a frescoed tympanum beneath ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... Chrisom child." "Who's Mike?" my brother growled A little roughly. Quoth the fisherman— "Mike, Sir? he's just a fisher lad, no more; But he can sing, when he takes on to sing, So loud there's not a sparrow in the spire But needs must hear. Sir, if I might make bold, I'd ask what song that was you sung. My mate, As we were shoving off the mackerel boats, Said he, 'I'll wager that's the sort o' song They kept their hearts up with in ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... statement all organizations, howsoever divided, which own Christ as their Head. Temple, cathedral, and chapel have each their daily use to those who gather there with Christian hearts; each is a living fountain to its own fold. The village spire, wherever it rises on American or English ground, bespeaks an association of families who find in this bond an inward companionship and outward expression of it in a public habit continuing from the fathers down, sanctified by the memories of ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... palace, the new districts appeared like a city of chalk and plaster mottled by innumerable windows as with a thousand touches of black ink. Then here and there were the Pincio showing like a stagnant mere, the Villa Medici uprearing its campanili, the castle of Sant' Angelo brown like rust, the spire of Santa Maria Maggiore aglow like a burning taper, the three churches of the Aventine drowsy amidst verdure, the Palazzo Farnese with its summer-baked tiles showing like old gold, the domes of the Gesu, of Sant' Andrea della Valle, of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, and yet other domes ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... See! mosaic walls, tattooed like our faces; paintings, vast as horizons; and into which, you feel you could rush: See! statues to which you could off turban; cities of columns standing thick as mankind; and firmanent domes forever shedding their sunsets of gilding: See! spire behind spire, as if the land were the ocean, and all Bello's great navy ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... park, and crossed the Hampstead Road into a dreary region of dwellings crowded and commonplace as the thoughts of a worshipper of Mammon, houses upon houses, here and there shepherded by a tall spire, it was hard to believe that the spring was indeed coming slowly ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... this unpleasant experience the mad fellow "took off" down wind. This idiotic method of leaving the ground resulted in his being barely able to rise above the roofs of the near-by village and brought him into direct contact with the church spire. The spire being of solid construction withstood the impact; the aeroplane did not. So Killem and his companions, together with the wrecked Handley-Page and one thousand five hundred and sixty-eight pounds of undetonated bombs descended ...
— Night Bombing with the Bedouins • Robert Henry Reece
... (Nothura major). These birds do not go in coveys, nor do they conceal themselves like the English kind. It appears a very silly bird. A man on horseback by riding round and round in a circle, or rather in a spire, so as to approach closer each time, may knock on the head as many as he pleases. The more common method is to catch them with a running noose, or little lazo, made of the stem of an ostrich's feather, fastened to the end ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... besides, I have made this: Lord, give Mary a dear kiss, And let gold Michael, who looked down, When I was there, on Rouen town From the spire, bring me that kiss On ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... had opened to leave space for a sloping triangular meadow. Pretty cottages lined it on two sides, and the upper and third side was occupied by a new stone church, expensively simple, a charming shingled spire. Mr. Beebe's house was near the church. In height it scarcely exceeded the cottages. Some great mansions were at hand, but they were hidden in the trees. The scene suggested a Swiss Alp rather than the shrine and centre of a leisured ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... only one church or "meeting-house" in Bethel, and it was of the Presbyterian faith; but every one in town attended it, whatever their creed. It was a severely plain edifice, with no spire and no bell. In summer it was comfortable enough, but in winter it was awful! There was no arrangement for heating it, and the congregation had to sit in the cold, shivering, teeth chattering, noses blue. A stove would ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... an hour after dawn when his father aroused him. The boat lay moored by a little quay, beyond which his eye travelled to clusters of red roofs glowing in the easterly sunshine, and a dominant spire, the weathercock of which dazzled the eye with its brightness. The town was just waking up, as could be perceived from the blue wreaths of smoke that poured out ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... passed by: and entering the dear green lane which led directly to the village, the sound of the well-known rookery gave that sentimental tinge to the varying sensations of my active soul, which only served to heighten the lustre of the luxuriant scenery. But spying, as I advanced, the spire peeping over the withered tops of the aged elms that composed the rookery, my thoughts flew immediately to the church-yard; and tears of affection, such was the effect of my imagination, bedewed my mother's ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... look healthy, and as has already been said, they make a beautiful tree. And if you want an avenue of trees on a drive that don't spread too wide and run up like Lombardi poplar, they'll beat Lombardi poplar all to pieces. And if you crowd them a little, they will grow up like a spire and retain their branches, so you really have ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... them in admiration upon the scene. There was the Sphinx welcoming us with an immense smile of benevolence, as suitable to the sunshine as had been her mysterious solemnity to the moonlight. There, far away to the left, the spire-crowned Citadel floated in translucent azure. Its domes and minarets, and the long serrated line of the Mokattam Hills were carved against the sky in the yellow-rose of pink topaz. Shafts of light gave to jagged shapes and terraces of rock on the low ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... ear, and the girl continued to imagine the future she was about to enter on with increasing distinctness. Looking across the fields she could see two houses, one in grey stone, the other in red brick with a gable covered with ivy; and between them, lost in the north, the spire of a church. On questioning a passer-by she learnt that the first house was the Rectory, the second was Woodview Lodge. If that was the lodge, what must ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... Nimegnen, Cleves, Duysberg, Dusseldorf, Cologne, Bonne, Coblentz, Nassau, Hocheim, Frankfort, and made an excursion to Hanau, then to Mayence, and another excursion to Rudesheim, and Johansberg; then by Oppenheim, Worms, and Manheim, making an excursion to Heidelberg, then by Spire, Carlsruhe, Rastadt, and Kelh, to Sfrasburg, where I arrived April the 16th, and proceeded again on the 18th, by Phalsbourg, Fenestrange, Dieuze, Moyenvie, Nancy, Toul, Ligny, Barleduc, St. Diziers, Vitry, Chalons sur Marne, Epernay, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... destruction's scope, Full little was that rustic's hope Their ripening to have seen! And, lo, a hamlet and its fane:- Let not the gazer with disdain Their architecture view; For yonder rude ungraceful shrine, And disproportioned spire, are ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... grey spire in the evening calm, No more they circle in sportive glee, Hearing the hum of the vesper psalm, And the swell of the organ so far below; But far, far away, over land and sea, In the still mid-air the swift ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... hands afterward. We have tried the ruthless and frightful method. We used to slaughter the entire population. To shoot a selected few is to court a maximum of contempt for a minimum of advantage. We used to lay waste the land. We did not content ourselves with knocking down a church spire and burning a library. We left not one stone upon another. We sowed salt where the cities had been. We tortured our prisoners before the ramparts. We did not "leave them their eyes to weep with"; we burned ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Yettocome. All the wondrous castles and palaces were there, marvelous in their beauty, glorious in their splendor, dazzling in their colors of emerald, rose and purple, of ruby, crimson and gold. From spire and dome, cupola and turret, tower and battlement the lights flashed and gleamed, while the Pilgrim looked in wonder and in awe. And high above the city walls, that shone as burnished silver in the sun, rose the temple ...
— The Uncrowned King • Harold Bell Wright
... to his eye." Stirling, in his Annals of Spanish Artists, says, that of no prince are recorded more sayings which show a refined taste and a quick eye. He told the Burghers of Antwerp that, "the light and soaring spire of their cathedral deserved to be put under a glass case." He called Florence "the Queen of the Arno, decked for a perpetual holiday." He regretted that he had given his consent for the conversion of the famous mosque of Abderahman ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... mount, The bare bleak mountain speckled thin with sheep; 30 Grey clouds, that shadowing spot the sunny fields; And river, now with bushy rocks o'er-brow'd, Now winding bright and full, with naked banks; And seats, and lawns, the Abbey and the wood, And cots, and hamlets, and faint city-spire; 35 The Channel there, the Islands and white sails, Dim coasts, and cloud-like hills, and shoreless Ocean— It seem'd like Omnipresence! God, methought, Had built him there a Temple: the whole World Seem'd imag'd in its vast circumference: 40 No wish profan'd my overwhelmd ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... high, and the upper stone above twenty. I was endeavoring to find some gap in the hedge, when I discovered one of the inhabitants in the next field, advancing towards the stile, of the same size with him I saw in the sea pursuing our boat. He appeared as tall as an ordinary spire steeple, and took about ten yards at every stride, as near as I could guess. I was struck with the utmost fear and astonishment, and ran to hide myself in the corn, whence I saw him at the top of the stile looking ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... the flood reclining, Ruined arch and wall and broken spire, Down beneath the watery mirror shining, Gleam and flash ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... where Science holds her reign, How joyous once I join'd thy youthful train! Bright in idea gleams thy lofty spire, Again I mingle with thy playful quire. * * * * * * * My wonted haunts, my scenes of joy and woe, Each early boyish friend, or youthful foe; Our feuds dissolved, but not my friendship past, I bless the former, and ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... supporting an entablature, crowned by a balustrade, which is continued along the sides of the church. Above the portico is a Corinthian peristyle, the base of which is also that of a fluted cone, which forms the spire, and is terminated in an acute point. The steeple is complete in itself, and adapted to its situation, having the same appearance which ever way it is viewed. This portion of the edifice has, however, been more stigmatized than any other, although it has been pronounced by persons of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII. F, No. 325, August 2, 1828. • Various
... scenery—river, streamlet, ocean, lighthouse, hills with flower-and-grass-tufted crags, and forests, while on any summer's day one may see, far away and "sown in a wrinkle of the monstrous hill," some neighboring village with its graceful spire of purest white gleaming and flaming in the hot sunshine, like marble set in a foil ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... quiet-retreat and let Nature paint the picture. The breath of the pine and birch fills the place like incense. The softly sighing pines with the distant waterfalls are singing their age-old songs. The evergreens are marshalled in serried ranks, spire above spire, like a phalanx of German soldiers clad in their green coats, their spiked helmets gleaming in the evening light. But they are pushing on to "victory and peace," and each soldier with aeolian melodies ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... hands in grate are fast enough: 1155 And when a circle 'bout the wrist Is made by beadle exorcist, The body feels the spur and switch, As if 'twere ridden post by witch At twenty miles an hour pace, 1160 And yet ne'er stirs out of the place. On top of this there is a spire, On which Sir Knight first bids the Squire The fiddle and its spoils, the case, In manner of a trophee place. 1165 That done, they ope the trap-door gate, And let CROWDERO down thereat; CROWDERO making doleful face, Like hermit poor in pensive place. To ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... on the water-side, is the viceroy's palace; that to the right again, is the convent of the barefooted Carmelites; yon lofty spire is the cathedral of St. Catherine; and that beautiful and light piece of architecture is the church of our Lady of Pity. You observe there a building with a dome, rising behind ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... crosswise, not more than two or three feet broad. They were worn and broken, and in some places decayed entirely away. We considered it, however, a good road, and cantered over it, our sure-footed horses never once stumbling. Glad indeed, were we, to see the white spire of the Hilo church, and more glad to reach Mr. Coan's hospitable house, where hot baths and a good dinner in some degree enlivened us. Grandma was tired, but a night and day's rest made her quite herself again. We felt amply repaid for any amount of ...
— Scenes in the Hawaiian Islands and California • Mary Evarts Anderson
... looks," said Gerald, as Anna began collecting vases from the tables in a drawing-room not professionally artistic, but entirely domestic, and full of grace and charm of taste, looking over a suburban garden fresh with budding spring to a church spire. ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to dry the tear, and soothe the choking throat, Would burn those tokens of the hearth that fondly o'er us float; They cannot trace amid the gloom each dainty spire and whorl, But smoke, to the true poet's eye, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Dec. 20, 1890 • Various
... quite imagine it; any more, perhaps, than our forefathers of ancient London, living in the pretty, carefully whitened houses, with the famous church and its huge spire rising above them,—than they, passing about the fair gardens running down to the broad river, could have imagined a whole county or more covered over with hideous hovels, big, middle-sized, and little, which should one ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... population and all, might be planted in Warwickshire, and no tourist would know that it was not indigenous there. They call their local stream the Avon, and boating there some idle summer days, I easily dreamed myself at home again, and within bow-shot of the skyward-pointing spire which covers the bones of Shakespeare. It is, I believe, a fact that the stream is christened after another river than that which owes its glamour to the poet's name, but in a case of this kind mere fact matters little, and the inhabitants ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... floating noiselessly about in an exquisite confusion, and distant strains of music, as Hannah said they sang, filled my listening ears. I felt myself being lifted gently by tender, unseen hands, and I wondered whether they would bear me far up above spire and tower, away from all the worries of this desolate world, into that happy sphere beyond where all is peace, and joy, ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... re-echoed from a hundred quarters. The water and all upon it was in active motion, dancing and buoyant and bubbling up; while the old grey Tower and piles of building on the shore, with many a church-spire shooting up between, looked coldly on, and seemed to ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... a robin mounted to a spruce-spire and acted as Job's comforter to all the birds of the garden by singing—ah, so plaintively and sweetly!—of the dismal days of frost and snow, he "preened"—i.e. went over and combed every feather, and tested and retested, cleaned and recleaned, each vital quill. Then, in one single, watery, weak ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... acknowledge that it is easier to conquer by obedience than with arms," he said. Then, exacting their oaths of allegiance, placing the imperial eagle upon the spire of the cathedral, and taking with him three hundred hostages, he marched away, with the confident belief that the defiant resistance of Milan was at ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... on all sides. A holly hedge and ha-ha prevented trespass; but those invited there found in this quiet sun-trap many headstones, bearing names and dates and epitaphs. Close by, a path, along which members of the family went often to and fro, led to yet another quiet corner, where a well-known spire showed above the trees. From this last there sounded at intervals the music of bells, chiming, or ringing solemnly, and beneath its shadow slept other folk, who had once walked the world with these same dogs of many generations, earning epitaphs no better, ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... the former it will turn all the rest into its own bright substance. Here is the stifling smoke, coming up from some newly-lighted fire of green wood, black and choking, and solid in its coils; but as the fire burns up, all the smoke-wreaths will be turned into one flaming spire, full of light and warmth. Do you turn your smoke into fire, your fear into faith. Do not be down-hearted if it takes a while to convert the whole of the lower and baser into the nobler and higher. Faith and fear do blend, thank God! They are as oil and water in a man's ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... dear green lane, which led directly to the village, the sound of the well-known rookery gave that sentimental tinge to the varying sensations of my active soul, which only served to heighten the lustre of the luxuriant scenery. But, spying, as I advanced, the spire, peeping over the withered tops of the aged elms that composed the rookery, my thoughts flew immediately to the church-yard, and tears of affection, such was the effect of my imagination, bedewed my mother's ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... and perils of the world, the sweet chime of bells from a village a few miles distant came stealing up the valley. Every sight and sound this morning seemed calculated to summon up touching recollections of poor Byron. The chime was from the village spire of Hucknall Torkard, beneath which his remains ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... word that all was right, we went ahead at a fearful pace on a very good road, lined with poplars, and running through a neat park-like country. Over to the right we could see the church-spire of Oyarzun, and the smoke curling from the chimneys; a little farther on we passed the debris of a diligence on the wayside; the telegraph wires along the route were broken down, and the poles taken away for firewood; we dived under a railway bridge, but never ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... rooms were well lighted, and the view in all directions was magnificent. Wherever the eye turned, it met knolls, and mounds, and fields, and picturesque groves, with here and there a substantial farm-steading, or a little hamlet, with its modest church-spire pointing ever upwards to the bright sky. Cattle and sheep lowed and bleated in the meadows, while gentle murmurs told that a rivulet flowed along its placid course at ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... without awakening an echo. But what attached him more than all to modern times, was his well-established relationship with the great family of the army. Wherever a French flag floats, the soldier, young or old, is at home. Around that church-spire of the fatherland, though dear and sacred in a way different from the village spire, language, ideas, and institutions change but little. The death of individuals has little effect; they are replaced by others who look like them, ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... while the last stars were lingering in the sky and the east was suffused with a faint pink haze, a scarlet spire shot up that was not sunrise. No one remarked it at first. Then a broad flash that might have been lightning but was not, and a cry on the still air startled the ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... fence and the road lay between this and the river, which was broad and shallow, and flowed softly in this part of its course. The church was a very pretty one of its kind—white as snow, with large-paned windows, and green Venetian blinds. It had a tall slender spire, in which hung the first bell that had ever wakened the echoes in that part of the country for miles around, and of the church and the bell, and the pretty tree-shaded common before it, the Gershom people were ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... immediate locality, but by no means as prominent or famous among his neighbors as he was in Europe. He was not so fertile in resources as to be in any sense inspired, and had privately waited for the finishing of a certain spire in the little town of Philadelphia so that he might use it to get nearer to the clouds to demonstrate his theory of lightning. It was in June, 1752, that this great exemplar of the genius of common-sense descended to the trial of the experiment ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... and dark and debauched he makes one feel! By nothing he says or means, of course, but merely by his old unconscious purity and simplicity—that slender straightness which makes him remind you of the spire of an English abbey. He greeted me with smiles, and stares, and alarming blushes. He assures me that he never would have known me, and that five years have altered me—sehr! I asked him if it were for the better? He looked at me hard for a moment, with his eyes of blue, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... to be wondered that she wandered long and wearily to very little purpose. Tall trees seemed to encompass her on every side, or where the view was more open, she beheld the distant blue hills rising one behind another; but no village spire or cottage chimney was there to cheer her on her way, and fatigued with the search, and despairing of finding the cattle, she resolved while it was yet light, to retrace ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... like our own Wye or Tees in their loveliest reaches; level meadows stretch away on its opposite side; mounds set with slender-stemmed foliage occupy the nearer ground, a small village with its simple spire peeps from the forest at the bend of the valley, and it is remarkable that in architecture thus employed neither Perugino nor any other of the ideal painters ever use Italian forms but always Transalpine, both of church and castle. The little landscape which forms the background of his own ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... and sunset fill the grassy stretches above Iffley, and the college eights flash past among cheering and splashing? Then there is supper in the cool halls, darkling, and half-lit up; and after supper talk, till the birds twitter in the elms, and the roofs and the chapel spire look unfamiliar in the blue of dawn. How long the days were then! almost like the days of childhood; how distinct is the impression all experience used to make! In later seasons Care is apt to mount the college staircase, ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... it bowed; The sun was radiant, large, and glowing; And, see, a minister's structure proud Stood in the rich light, golden showing. The clouds around it, sunny-clear, Seemed bearing it aloft like pinions; Its spire-point seemed to disappear, Slow vanishing ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald
... a ruddy patch in the road showed where tile or chimney-pot had been swept off and dashed to pieces. The sign at the village inn had been torn from its hinges, and farther on Tom came upon the Vicar examining the great gilt weather-cock on the little spire at the top of the big square, ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... e persa e rose e gigli e croco Spargon dall'odorifero terreno Tanta suavita, ch'in mar sentire La fa ogni vento che da terra spire." (Oil. Fur. ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... receded from around it for yards—to an immense boulder in its base—by far the largest stone I ever saw in an Old Red conglomerate. The mass is of a rudely rhomboidal form, and measures nearly twelve feet in the line of its largest diagonal. A second huge pebble in the same detached spire measures four feet by about three. Both have their edges much rounded, as if, ere their deposition in the conglomerate, they had been long exposed to the wear of the sea; and both are composed of an earthy amygdaloidal trap. I have stated elsewhere ["Old Red Sandstone," Chapter ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... away out of the wooded slopes across the valley, but in the clearness of the sunset distinct and unmistakable, he saw a little spire of smoke. ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... refreshing; and it is Sunday, and we have got away from the wicked for an hour or two; but in England there would be a little white church out yonder, and a spire like an angel's forefinger pointing from the grass to heaven, and the lads in their clean smock-frocks like snow, and the wenches in their white stockings and new shawls, and the old women in their scarlet cloaks and black bonnets, all going one road, and a tinkle-tinkle from the belfry, that would ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... for the night, travellers wending their way into the great metropolis, and carts carrying to its devouring maw the food for the next day. Between the sixth and seventh milestone, however, where the moon was just seen raising her yellow horn beside the village spire, he beheld a man mounted upon a powerful horse, riding towards him, who by his military aspect, broad shoulders, powerful frame, and erect seat upon his horse, he recognised, while still ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... they could speak thus on the eve of their prostration? You have only to look from a distance at any old-fashioned cathedral city, and you will see in a moment the mediaeval relations between Church and State. The cathedral is the city. The first object you catch sight of as you approach is the spire tapering into the sky, or the huge towers holding possession of the centre of the landscape—majestically beautiful—imposing by mere size amidst the large forms of Nature herself. As you go nearer, the vastness of the building impresses ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... that Christmas would be cold. In a quarter of an hour they saw their chronology late by a day. In half an hour they noted a gray mist drive across the sky. There was a faint wavering and spreading and deflection at the top of the tallest spire of smoke. Somewhere, high above, there passed a ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... in surveying the numerous traces of desolation in Turkey was soon effaced at Belgrade. Here all was life and activity. It was at the period of my first visit, in 1839, quite an oriental town; but now the haughty parvenu spire of the cathedral throws into the shade the minarets of the mosques, graceful even in decay. Many of the bazaar-shops have been fronted and glazed. The oriental dress has become much rarer; and houses several stories high, in the German fashion, are springing ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... 1851 the weathercock on the spire of the church was blown off, and in the following ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... this point, for he saw by the clock on Trinity spire that it was time to go back to join Paul Hoffman, as he had agreed. I may here add that Phil's wrongs were avenged that same evening, his friend, Dick, administered to Tim the promised "lickin'" with such good effect that the latter carried a black ...
— Phil the Fiddler • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... yea, stouter foes than wind-mills, were I to have commenced with an attack upon external church architecture: this topic let us leave to the fraternity of builders; only asking by what rule of taste an obelisk-like spire, is so often stuck upon the roof of a Grecian temple, and by what rule of convenience gigantic columns so commonly and resolutely sentinel the narrowest of exits and entrances. Let us be more commonly contented, as well we may, with our grand, appropriate, and impressive indigenous kind of architecture—Gothic, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... fields despoiled of their rich harvest, yet still presenting a yellow surface to the eye; and ever and anon some bright patch of green, demanding the gaze as if by a lingering spell from the past spring; while, here and there, spire and hamlet studded the landscape, or some lowly cot lay, backed by the rising ground or the silent woods, white and solitary, and sending up its faint tribute of smoke in spires to the altars of Heaven. The river was more pregnant of life than its banks: barge and ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... faints in me for the distant sea. The roar of London is the roar of ire The lion utters in his old desire For Libya out of dim captivity. The long bright silver of Cheapside I see, Her gilded weathercocks on roof and spire Exulting eastward in the western fire; All things ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... French village is very like another bombarded French village. A cowering assemblage of battered little houses; a pitiful little main street, with its eviscerated shops and estaminets; a shattered church-spire. Beyond that, an enclosure of splintered stumps that was once an orchard. Below all, cellars, reinforced with props and sandbags, and filled ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... But we had been very little in society, and the world at large seemed willing to believe almost anything of me that was wrong. However, there's the Rummelsburg marriage, and if you send to Rummelsburg you'll find that it's all right,—a little white church up a corner, with a crooked spire. The old clergyman is, no doubt, dead, but I should imagine that they would keep their registers." Then he explained how he had travelled about the world with the two sets of certificates, and had ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... a Letter of the Rev. Mr. J. Darwin, of Carleton Scroop in Lincolnshire, authenticates a curious fact of this kind. "When I mentioned to you the circumstance of crows or rooks building in the spire of Welbourn church, you expressed a desire of being well informed of the certainty of the fact. Welbourn is situated in the road from Grantham to Lincoln on the Cliff row; I yesterday took a ride thither, and enquired of the rector, Mr. Ridgehill, ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... home-loves, noble Chatterton, The angel-trodden stair thy soul could trace Up Redcliffe's spire; and in the world's armed space Thy gallant sword-play:—these to many an one Are sweet for ever; as thy grave unknown, And love-dream ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... Ambulant, undulant drapery, Vaguery and strangely provocative, Fluttersd and beckons. O, yonder - Is it?—the gleam of a stocking! Sudden, a spire Wedged in the mist! O, the houses, The long lines of lofty, grey houses, Cross-hatched with shadow and light! These are the streets . . . Each is an avenue leading Whither ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... could not be too careful, and he authorized me to write to you and find out all you knew about him. He said you had known him ever since he was a boy, and that if there was anything bad in his record you could tell it, and he did not want you to spire the truth. He knows you will be just, and he wants you to write out the facts as they ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... grey city wrapped in its veil of smoke, the tall spire of the old church rising in picturesque isolation above the line of the surrounding buildings. It seemed at that moment to stand as a symbol of the life of the Mother Country, a life fenced in by convention, ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... hill's slopes, among the trees, stood the square white houses of the town folk. Beyond them, the white spire of the church with its weather vane atop. Joel marked that the wind was still northeast. The vane swung fitfully in the light air. He could see the masts and yards of the ships along the waterfront. The ...
— All the Brothers Were Valiant • Ben Ames Williams
... "the music of the spheres." Order stretched the very layers of the everlasting rocks like ribs around the earth, and shaped the crystals of the cavern. There is order in the structure of every spire of grass, of every flower and shrub, of every tree and trembling leaf; in the mechanism of every animal, from man in his godlike attitude, to the smallest microscopic tribes. All organic existences are preserved in being, nurtured, grow and mature, according to certain laws. Even the winds, ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark
... yonder, boys, just beyond the spire of the Presbyterian Church! Don't you think it's showing brighter in that quarter? Yes, sir, the fire lies over that way, as sure ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... beautiful spire was destroyed by fire caused by lightning or by a plumber's neglect, and the Chapter House seriously injured. We have no trustworthy plates prior to this fire, and the various estimates about the height of the spire and other matters are anything ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock
... ennui, but of sensibility. "Red life boils in my veins.... Every woman is to me the gift of a world.... I hear a thousand nightingales.... I could eat all the elephants of Hindostan and pick my teeth with the spire of Strasburg Cathedral.... Life is the greatest of blessings, and death the worst of evils...." But the poet was still reading—she forced herself ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Netherlands, upon the advent of peace. All was joy in the provinces, but at Antwerp, the metropolis of the land, the enthusiasm was unbounded. Nine days were devoted to festivities. Bells rang their merriest peals, artillery thundered, beacons blazed, the splendid cathedral spire flamed nightly with three hundred burning cresaets, the city was strewn with flowers and decorated with triumphal arches, the Guilds of Rhetoric amazed the world with their gorgeous processions, glittering dresses and bombastic versification, the burghers all, from highest to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... cones bristled, pyramiding to the base of one tremendous spire that tapered up almost to the top of the ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... together or separating before the spirit of the place can be well given, they must be brought together, or separated. Which is a more truthful view, of Shrewsbury, for example, from a spot where St. Alkmund's spire is in parallax with St. Mary's—a view which should give only the one spire which can be seen, or one which should give them both, although the one is hidden? There would be, I take it, more representation in the misrepresentation than in the representation—"the half would be greater than ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... poplars, elms, Scotch firs, and spectral houses. But, above, everything was clear. The school-buildings, such as he could see, stood out boldly against a cloudless sky, and above these soared the spire of Harrow Church, pointing ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... service on an elevated, but small platform above the dining place, looking down upon the great chestnut tree, and indeed upon all our possessions. Thus endeavouring to realize the scenes so often seen in England, where the pretty simple church, with its graceful spire, is seen on an elevated place, while the humble cottages, and rose-covered houses clustered ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... bearing reticules and bundles, renewed itself in the most liberal manner. On the other side of the grave-yard was a row of small red brick houses, showing a series of homely, domestic-looking backs; at the end opposite the hotel a tall wooden church-spire, painted white, rose high into the vagueness of the snow-flakes. The lady at the window looked at it for some time; for reasons of her own she thought it the ugliest thing she had ever seen. She hated it, she despised it; it threw her ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... 1742." We can readily appreciate the happiness of the people when first called to their house of worship by the voice of this bell, and can weave threads of joy and of sadness around its echoes, In 1852 this old church was dismantled of its spire and removed to the site of the present Eliot Hall. It was subsequently destroyed by fire. While the stone edifice was being erected the congregation occupied the Baptist Church one ...
— Annals and Reminiscences of Jamaica Plain • Harriet Manning Whitcomb
... pine, white cypress, cypressus thyoides, the wild pine, with two or three other sorts of pine less common. The two first make up almost two-thirds of the whole; and, at a distance, might be mistaken for the same tree, as they both run up into pointed spire-like tops, but they are easily distinguished on coming nearer from their colour, the cypress being of a much paler green, or shade, than the other. The trees, in general, grow with great vigour, and are all ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... have made ten of the rapier to which ERSKINE of Cardross had significantly called attention. When, later, it peacefully rested behind doorkeeper's chair, its mighty hilt rose above topmost height like the cross on a cathedral spire. Sword-Bearer looked at LORD MAYOR; Mace-Bearer grasped with both hands shaft of his ponderous weapon. Both warriors accustomed to public meetings in Dublin; knew what was expected of them by way of argument. LORD MAYOR happily in placable mood. Readjusting ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 29, 1893 • Various
... Hursley, 1857.—As a pair for many years had a nest on Salisbury spire, this one may have flown ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... church, which is very solid, and has dignity of outline, was the work of Flitcroft, and was opened April 14, 1734. The steeple is 160 feet high, with a rustic pedestal, a Doric story, an octagonal tower, and spire. The basement is of rusticated Portland stone, of which the church is built, and quoins of the same material decorate the windows and angles within. It follows the lines of the period, with hardly any chancel, wide galleries on three sides standing ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... little hill, and saw the spire of a steeple, and the skirts of a country town, which a passenger told us was ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... breezy common, wide enough to make one think "long, long thoughts"; and if the traveller looks backward when he has crossed this common, he will see Sedgehill Church, crowning and commanding the vast expanse, and pointing heavenward with its slender spire to remind him, and all other wayfaring men, that the beauty and glory of this present world is only an earnest and a foretaste of something ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... had been laid and its walls built by a priest, who had collected large sums of money in America, and whose desire had been to have the largest church that could be built for the least money, in the shortest possible time. The result was the great, sprawling, grey stone building with a desolate spire, now fading into the darkness of the snow-storm. Money had run short. The church had not been completed when its founder died; then another energetic priest had raised another subscription. Doors and ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... more bays to the east, building in all six bays, of which two were included in the ritual choir, and four were to the east of the high altar. All this was done between the years 1235 and 1251. The bishop also erected a lofty timber spire on the west tower, which remained until the present Decorated ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ely • W. D. Sweeting
... could inquire the way. For nearly a quarter of a mile a belt of trees obscured the view, and when at last the prospect could once more be seen, Beatrice stopped short with a groan of despair. On the other side of the water was the unmistakable spire of ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... bordered the opposite shore of the river—solemn sentinels guarding the beauty and purity of this virgin land. Near her were sloping hills, dotted with thorny cactus and other prickly plants, and now rose a bald rock spire with its suggestion of grim lonesomeness. In the southern and eastern distances were the plains, silent, vast, unending. It seemed she had come to dwell in a land deserted by some cyclopean race. Its magnificent, ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... service in the cathedral, a large modern structure, with two towers, each of which required a spire forty feet high to complete the original design. Massive columns of Aberdeen granite had been erected in the interior to support the roof of polished oak, adorned with carved devices, some of which ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... to latest times to mourn. His blood in constant tears exhausted, now His limbs a green hue take; his locks which late Hung o'er his snowy forehead, rough become In frightful bushiness; and hardening quick, Shoot up to heaven in form a slender spire. The mourning god, in grief exclaim'd—"By me "Bemoan'd, thou shalt with others always grieve; "And henceforth mourners shalt thou still attend."— Thus did the bard a wood collect around; And in the midst he sate of thronging beasts, And crowding birds. The chords he amply ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... one uneasy and anxious. When we see persons in situations which strongly suggest the idea of danger to our minds, it makes us uneasy, though we may know that there is no actual danger in the case. Thus it is painful to most persons to see a carpenter upon a very lofty spire, or to go very near a precipice, or see any body else go, even when there is a strong railing; and so in all other cases. Therefore, our rule ought always to be, when we are in company with others, not only not to go into actual danger, but not to go so near as strongly to bring up the ...
— Rollo's Museum • Jacob Abbott
... narrow—scarcely a cable's length across—and it was marked by a lighthouse on the northern side, and a castle or tower or something of that kind on the other bank. The town behind, with its heavy walls and white houses, was plainly visible from seaward, and the spire of the principal church was somehow used as a leading mark. But whether one had to keep it on the lighthouse or the castle, I could not recollect. Neither could I call to mind whether there was ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... arm in arm, we two have reached, nay, passed, you see, The village-precinct; sun sets mild on Saint-Marie— We only catch the spire, and yet I seem to know What's hid i' the turn o' the hill: how all the graves must glow Soberly, as each warms its little iron cross, Flourished about with gold, and graced (if private loss Be fresh) with stiff rope-wreath of yellow, crisp bead-blooms ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... the low sill and stood on the leads. The night was soft and cool. The sky, full of the light of a rising moon, shewed beautifully, against its luminous violet, the outlines of dome and minaret and spire, and far out beyond the crowded city's confines, the two incomparable mountains, Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl, the huge volcanoes, shrouded in eternal snow, rising a sheer ten thousand feet from the level plain, standing like sentinels ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... has corroborated his statement, giving at the same time a graphic description of his physical appearance: "Hee inherited more vertues than vices," wrote Nash, "a jolly long red peake [beard] like the spire of a steeple he cherisht continually, without cutting, whereat a man might hang a jewell, it was so sharp and pendant ... He had his faultes ... Debt and deadly sinne, who is not subject to?... A good fellow he was ... In a night and a day would he have ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... will even in the remotest corners of the Cumbrian country, and soon not a vestige of the homely worshipping-places of an earlier day will remain. Across the road, in front of the Long Whindale parsonage, for instance, rose a freshly built church, also peaked and gabled, with a spire and two bells, and a painted east window, and Heaven knows what novelties besides. The primitive whitewashed structure it replaced had lasted long, and in the course of many generations time had clothed its moss-grown walls, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... delicately through the filth and tumbled stones that lay everywhere, for the melodious roar seemed to be bidding him haste and be welcome. Mr. Morris was close beside him, and remarked on this and that as they went, the spire of St. Ann's away to the right, with St. Pancras's Bridge, a swinging sign over an inn with Queen Katharine's face erased, but plainly visible under Ann Boleyn's, the tall mound beyond the Priory crowned by a Calvary, and the roof ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... the depths of the descent, which was not so precipitous there as under the castle, the high houses and green braes were reflected in the quiet waters of the North Loch. From thence the fields and scattered farmhouses, the Calton Hill in unadorned greenness, a church spire and a cluster of village roofs here and there, led the eye to the shining of the Scottish Sea, the great water with its islands, the coast of Fife with its dotted line of little fishing towns, the two green Lomonds standing softly distinct against the misty line of more distant hills. ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... hear, No human trace descry. His sinuous path, by blazes, wound Among trunks grouped in myriads round; Through naked boughs, between Whose tangled architecture fraught With many a shape grotesquely wrought, The hemlock's spire was seen.—A. B. STREET. ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis
... if possible, win over those troops whose loyalty to your Majesties has been in question; then on to secure a safe retreat in case our plan fails, which, pray God, it may not! Either Worms, where Monsieur de Conde is powerful, or Spire, whose Prince-Bishop is most devoted to your Majesties, will surely offer its hospitality and protection. It depends only on your Majesties' firmness to escape from this capital and captivity. Through letters to my wife" (Calvert hesitated slightly—'twas ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... style and old-fashioned aspect of Belfield meeting-house attest its venerable age. For more than a hundred years its slender spire has glowed in the ruddy beams of early dawn, and cast at sunset its lengthening shadow across the village green. A century ago, the mellow tones of its Sabbath bell, echoing through the valley, summoned the pious congregation to their austere devotions. Before the worn threshold of the great double-leaved ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... crossed the valley, and began to ascend the opposite hill. As we were toiling up, I looked back again; there was the village spire, and the old grey parsonage beyond it, basking in a slanting beam of sunshine—it was but a sickly ray, but the village and surrounding hills were all in sombre shade, and I hailed the wandering beam as a propitious ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... dully at the blazing wooden church-spire where it stood enveloped in flames as though wrapped in an inflated glittering cloak. Dully he let his eyes wander over the hedges and fences; everything seemed unreal, as things seen across a distant wave or a downpour of rain, ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... now at even-close Down the field path, Sordello! by thorn-rows Alive with lamp-flies, swimming spots of fire And dew, outlining the black cypress-spire She waits you at, Elys, who heard you first Woo her, the snow month through, but, ere she durst Answer 'twas April. Linden-flower-time long Her eyes were on the ground; 'tis July, strong Now; and, because white dust-clouds overwhelm ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... town and the fresh-whitened towers. Thus drove Hermann on till he came to the well-known causeway. Rapidly, loitering nowhere, but hastening up hill and down hill. But as he now before him perceived the spire of the village, And no longer remote the garden-girt houses were lying, Then in himself he thought that here he would rein up ...
— Hermann and Dorothea • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... phallic and Solophallic shrines over all the high places around him, and especially in front of Jerusalem, and on and around the Mount of Olives." On each side of the entrance to his celebrated temple, under the great phallic spire which formed the portico, were two handsome columns over fifty feet high, by the side of which were the sun God Belus ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... and convents, turning every window on the west to fire and transforming a multitude of towers and turrets and minarets to glittering gold. Small wonder, indeed, that all our rough tripmen stopped paddling and with eyes on the spire of Notre Dame des Victoires muttered prayers for a prosperous voyage. For some reason or other, I found my own hat off. So was Mr. Jack MacKenzie's, so was Eric Hamilton's. Then the voyageurs fell to work again. ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... of the subject which I might call grace swearing. 'Od's fish,' cried the king, when he saw the man climbing Salisbury spire; 'he shall have a patent for it—no one else shall do it.' One might call such little things Wardour Street curses. 'Od's bodkins' is a ladylike form, and 'Od's possles' a variety I met in the British Museum. Every gentleman once upon ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... had erected in the foolish hope of benefiting the freedmen, where the young teachers had labored with such devotion, and where so many of the despised race had laid the foundation of a knowledge that they vainly hoped might lift them up into the perfect light of freedom, was a solid spire ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... whatever it is," shouted Roy a few minutes later as a tall spire-like shaft of yellow light seemed ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler
... well-regulated and insensitive tastes. From Greenfield Hill one looked away over a wide stretch of rolling country; low hills, in long, desolate waves of pasturage and grain, relieved here and there by a mass of black woodland, or a red farm-house and barns clustered against a hill-side, just over a wooden spire in the shallow valley, about which were gathered a few white houses, giving signs of life thrice a day in tiny threads of smoke rising from their prim chimneys; and over all, the pallid skies of New England, where the sun wheeled his shorn beams from east to west as coldly as if no tropic ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... church with a pointed spire stood on the highest point of the cliff, close to the town. Behind the cliff rose a hill of some height, upon which the better houses, with red-tiled roofs, were situated. A wide road ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... of State) giving her no right to be seated. Behind these two ladies stood the two Gondis, talking to them. They alone of this dismal assembly were smiling. Albert Gondi, now Duc de Retz, marshal of France, and gentleman of the bed-chamber, had been deputed to marry the queen by proxy at Spire. In the first line of courtiers nearest to the king stood the Marechal de Tavannes, who was present on court business; Neufville de Villeroy, one of the ablest bankers of the period, who laid the ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... had not come true, thus far. There were no roses blooming on Archie's cheeks yet; and sometimes, when Lilias watched his pale face, as he sat gazing out into the mist, she was painfully reminded of the time when he used to watch the shadow of the spire coming slowly round to the yew-tree by ...
— The Orphans of Glen Elder • Margaret Murray Robertson
... which thus towers above us, and gleams like the shining cross on the top of some lofty cathedral spire, does not flash up there inaccessible, nor lie before us like some pathless precipice, up which nothing that has not wings can ever hope to rise, but the height of the love of Christ is an hospitable height, which can be scaled ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... the point at which they were lying, stretched London Bridge, with its narrow arches and the houses projecting beyond it on their supports of stout timbers. Beyond, on the right, rising high above the crowded roofs, was the lofty spire of St. Paul's. The boys were almost awed by this vast assemblage of buildings. That London was a great city they had known, but they were not prepared for so immense a difference between it and the place where they had ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... waters of Lake Lucerne mirrored the glowing colors of the mountain-peaks beyond its farther shore, and nearer, among the foothills of old Pilatus itself, a little village nestled among green trees, its roofs clustered about a white church-spire. Now the bells in the steeple began to ring, and the sound floated out across the green fields spangled with yellow daffodils, and reached Mother Adolf where she stood. Bells from more distant villages soon joined in the clamor, until ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... a hundred yards or more from the cliffs, a number of huge rocks stood alone. I suppose at some time they must have slipped from the mainland, but that was undoubtedly in the far-back past. One of them, I remember, was shaped like a spire, and seemed to look with derision on the foaming waters that sometimes nearly covered it, and at others left it standing ill all its majesty on the ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... approached; in the fourteenth the Rhine witnessed the invention of artillery; and on its bank, at Strassburg, a printing-office was first established. In 1400 the famous cannon, fourteen feet in length, was cast at Cologne; and in 1472 Vindelin de Spire printed his Bible. A new world was making its appearance; and, strange to say, it was upon the banks of the Rhine that those two mysterious tools with which God unceasingly works out the civilization of man—the catapult and the book—war and ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... view'd, Dissolve.—Above the sparkling flood, When Phoebus rears his awful brow, From lengthening lawn and valley low The troops of fen-born mists retire. Along the plain The joyous swain Eyes the gay villages again, And gold-illumined spire; While on the billowy ether borne Floats the loose lay's jovial measure; And light along the fairy Pleasure, Her green robes glittering to the morn, Wantons on silken wing. And goblins all To the damp dungeon shrink, or hoary hall, Or westward, with impetuous flight, Shoot to the desert realms ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... defeat; Napoleon, camp-chest; Major AndrA(C), capture; Demosthenes, orations; gunpowder, invention; mountain, top; summer, end; Washington, sword; Franklin, staff; torrent, force; America, metropolis; city, streets; strike, beginning; church, spire; we (our, us), midst; year, events; Guiteau, trial; sea, bottom; Essex, death; Adams, administration; six months, wages; ...
— Practical Exercises in English • Huber Gray Buehler
... churches—rare elsewhere—is the narrow tapering fleche, or leaded spire; a feature almost wholly absent is the apse, which is, I believe, present only at Bengeo, Great Wymondley, ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... he had seen Caernarvon's towers, And well he knew the spire of Sarum; And he had been where Lincoln bell Flings o'er the fen that ponderous knell— A far-renowned alarum. ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... say it is as gay all times As holidays at home! The gentles ride in gay attire, And in the sun each gilded spire Shoots up like those of Rome! The bishop the procession leads, The generals curb their prancing steeds. Alas! I know not Carcassonne— Alas! ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... about 8000 square miles, at least 1200 square miles of it is occupied by the central mountain group and its adjuncts, the highest peak rising to a height of nearly 5000 feet (or nearly 600 feet higher than Ben Nevis), above the interior, and throwing a fine spire of shadow thereon. In the midst of this central boss are two deep craters, one being about 10 miles in diameter, and a number of shallower depressions. In association with the loftiest peak, I noted at 8 h., March 9, 1889, two brilliant little craters, which presumably are not ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... Contemplated from each deck by a numerous gathering and from the pilot-house by Watson, Mrs. Gilmore, and "Harriet," a small procession followed the priest and the three boxes—borne by white-jackets—ashore and out of sight where a small wooden church spire, inland behind the bluff, peered over its crest. Madame Hayle leaned on Julian's arm, Ramsey on Lucian's, Hugh walked with Marburg, the senator with the general, the first clerk with Ned, the Californian with the cub pilot. By and by they returned, ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable |
